Merry Christmas! Ten days to Christmas. No, we don’t have any religious affiliation with the day; it’s more a milestone or a yardstick or a touchstone or a gauge point, for me. This year feels different. Have you noticed it? It’s as though the world isn’t quite sitting right. Hmmm. Maybe it’s my imagination.
Back in Big Ol’ Melbourne Town for the mad time of year & it’s starting to show. Never seen so many cars on the roads; stoplights blinking, shuffling & crawling & belching smog at 20km/h on roads designed for 80km/h. Sprawling soulless shopping centres with their sprawling hot car parks (parks?) and sprawling aggression and heat and everywhere a rush-rush-rushin’ to “get things done” & don’t worry ‘cos “things will be better next year…” Why next year?
It’s a jungle out there. Walking through our wonderful double front doors though, all dramas of the outside world are forgotten. We’re living a local life in the multicultural (truly) north of Melbourne; walking to the shops & to the baby health centre & to the plant nursery & to the market & avoiding use of the car. We ripped up a little Cyprus from our yard & potted it as our Christmas tree – which CJ then majestically decorated. Ho ho ho. It sits in the mouth of our fire place, awaiting the arrival of the jolly fat red man.
This year he’ll be focussed not on CJ, nor on me. No, this year Stephanie will take centre stage for her first Christmas. She has been flat out eating & sleeping & playing since birth 7 weeks ago. And growing. She’s increased her mass by a third, and left size 0000 and size 000 behind... They grow up so fast! Last night, carrying her wailing form around the back of the house, her growth was obvious. Instead of the compact, red-faced source of yelling of 6 weeks ago, she had become a writhing, kicking, swirling red-faced source of yelling…
It seems that she does something new every day. Holding her own head up, twisting it around; lifting her head while lying on her tummy; making her first voice/ talk-ish sounds; sleeping for 7 consecutive hours overnight for the first time (miracle, o miracle!); enjoying bath after bath after bath & then discovering the joys of baby massage. Loving hugs on the couch after a feed with a milk-drunk little girl on my shoulder, gradually working up the strength to turn her head & look me in the eye…
I’m rambling now. Somebody stop me.
A few weeks ago I rambled enough to enter & win the Moreland regional short story competition. The topic? Yep, it was about Stephanie…. (noticing a pattern here?)
Most adventures of the past month have occurred at our place, as Steph grows & learns & wakes & sleeps. It’s an awe-inspiring time. Last year CJ & I spent Christmas sweating it out at Jabiru, as the first of the monsoon rains reached Kakadu. It all seems like a different age. As we wish you a Merry Christmas this year, we are living in a wonderfully happy house full of music & milk spews & a flowering kangaroo paw & lemon cake & a flavoursome kaffir lime tree (get one of these trees – green curry brilliance). I look forward to the reflection times of next Christmas, when I can re-visit these days.
So it’s Merry Christmas to you from us in Coburg.
May your reflections be kind & your Christmas time happy & healthy.
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